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No eternity

I remember as a child how I used to dread these christian stories of Hell for ever, everlasting burning and torture. You ll find these in the great works of J. Bosch and Breughel. Or...it could also have een eternal bliss in the lap of God and surrounded by hysterical saints and devoted angels. An eternity of f...... boredom.
Neither nor.
As always, Dogen and this practice will challenge your belief system and get you in a space-time- being which has nothing to do with the whip or the bag of sweets, and certainly not with: it ain t going to stop Baby, this is always going to be...

Rather than eternity: the timeless, that is to say, the complete realization beyond time and in the now, beyond space and right in the here, free of being attached to this and that, life and death collapsing in each other. And nothing freezes, and nothing lasts, it all moves. Still yet dynamic, actively peaceful. The timeless. Not the continuation of time ad eternam but the great circle in which things arise and vanish. Not an escape, a way out, but a way in, further and deeper where the broad stroke is done.

Please, come in.

Every moment the timeless manifests countless ripples and forms, each of those miroring freely and perflectly the timeless itself.

Agony and boredeom out of the window.

Ease and joy.

You are the flesh and bones and marrow and breath of it all: timeless itself.

Driving around town I come across numerous church billboards with messages such as "Timeless hope for hopeless times" or, paraphrased, "In a changing world, God's doesn't." While I don't have an axe to grind with Christianity, I wonder what the merit of a static world would be. I also wonder what makes the present particularly hopeless for someone in this country.

Thankyou Taigu
Brought up in a Christian tradition myself, I could never understand the concept of hell from a supposedly all wise loving deity. If I see my own children learning lessons, why would I perpetually punish them. The whole concept is rife with ethical and logical issues, not to mention the lack of belief in hell in Jesus's own culture.

IT remembers me Uji I read not so long ago
It's a difficult reading but the little I understood made me feel free of fear at this moment
It's a good post Taigu, the way you expone with simplicity shows your understanding with brain and marrow of practice.
May we be able to understand the profund meaning you give to us
Gassho

Myoshin

Myoshin 妙 心
"A person who receives the Buddhist Precepts enters the state of Buddha at once. They stand at the same level as Gautama Buddha. We can say they are a child of the Buddha." Jundo

maybe teaching eternity to those who might not grasp timelessness is a kind of skillful means, getting some individuals at least heading in the right direction or part-way out of the burning house. I think for me, Eternity eventually became a kind of "eternal moment" understanding. still working on getting rid of the eternal and the understanding parts.

what happens to Eternity at the apocalyptic end-of-time, when all accounts are settled?

What happens to Eternity at the apocalyptic end oftime when all accounts ae settled?

Interesting sentence , Oheso. The only real words in this sentence, and by real, I mean arising in your reality, are the two first words: what happens. Great words actually. Very useful to come back when one is drifting away. The other words are concepts and ideas which are coming from the body of myths generated by the belief system of God as a creator, a maker and a destructor of his own creation. The big and mighty father who spits the world and reabsorbs it digesting it and spliting it into the good ( nutrient taken) and the bad ( feces).Eschatology, the science of ultimate ends is also scatology, the study of feçes, the art of Heaven and hell. This mighty figure who reingurgitates his creation, who swallows up forms and space has very little to do with what I can see as God.

Anyway Eternity, in this rather primitive view means that God is beyond time, and in him, and only him, time is negated. Eternity is the communion of God and creature, the way God is experiencing himself through his creature, and the creature in total rapture through the divine intoxication escapes immanence and boundaries.

In our way, no separation between "God" and what is. Originally, we are not sinners but already saved. Neither creation nor destruction but a constantly broken fluctuatiing fabric, everything changes.

The teaching of all Buddhas is to be free while staying in the mess. To clearly see and practice that Samsara and Nirvana are not two.

Teaching Eternity rather than a skillful means is a clever mind control device. Even popular Buddhism could not resist it offering to the naive believers terrifying pictures of hells and promises of Buddha land with endless fields of lotus flowers. Hope and fear. Eternity is the key that open the box of hope and fear. Drop eternity, and you cannot control people anymore through the use of punishment and goodies. Drop hope and fear, eternity will be seen for what it is, a seductive fiction.

I remember as a child how I used to dread these christian stories of Hell for ever, everlasting burning and torture. You ll find these in the great works of J. Bosch and Breughel. Or...it could also have een eternal bliss in the lap of God and surrounded by hysterical saints and devoted angels. An eternity of f...... boredom.

I remember horrifying my mother with this idea as a kid.

_/|\_

--Washu
和 Harmony
秀 Excellence

"Trying to be happy by accumulating possessions is like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches all over your body" George Carlin Roshi

In the endless time, between each point of time manifested, we have a gap (between 2 pop up); and this time is the moment of buddha nature, the moment of awakened awakening, in sum the realisation itself. So we can feel safe and return at home every moment. I think something like that.
I'm not trying to play with words but to match English words with my ideas
Thank you alan.r

Gassho Taigu

Myoshin

Myoshin 妙 心
"A person who receives the Buddhist Precepts enters the state of Buddha at once. They stand at the same level as Gautama Buddha. We can say they are a child of the Buddha." Jundo